Confounded by this audacity and moved by many inner and conflicting emotions, Dr. Izard first flushed, then stood very still, surveying the man with a silent passion which many there thought to be too emphatic a return for what sounded to them like nothing more than an ill-judged pleasantry. Then he spoke, quietly, but with a sort of gasp, odd to hear in his usually even and melodious voice. “I do not know you. Whatever you may call yourself, you are a stranger to me, and no stranger has a right to address me with impertinence. What _do_ you call yourself?” he suddenly demanded, advancing a step and darting his gaze into the other’s eyes with a determination that would have abashed most men whether they were all they proclaimed themselves to be or not. A playful sneer, a look in which good-natured forbearance still struggled uppermost, were all that he got from this man. “So you are determined not to recognize Ephraim Earle,” cried the stranger. “You must have good reasons for it, Oswald Izard; reasons which it would not be wise perhaps for one to inquire into too curiously.” It was an attack for which the doctor was not fully prepared. He faltered for an instant and his cheek grew livid, but he almost immediately recovered himself, and with even more than his former dignity, answered shortly: “Now you are more than impertinent, you are insolent. I do not need to have secret reasons for repudiating any claims you may make to being Polly Earle’s father. Your face denies the identity you usurp. You have not a trait of the man you call yourself. Your eyes——” “Oh, do not malign my eyes,” laughed the stranger. “They are faded I know and one lid has got a way of drooping of late years, which has greatly altered my expression. But they are the same eyes, doctor, that watched with you beside the bed of Huldah Earle and if they fail to meet you with just the same mixture of trembling hope and fear as they did then it is because youthful passions die out with the years and I no longer greatly care for any verdict you may have to give.” A frown hard to fathom corrugated the doctor’s forehead and he continued to survey in silence the bold face that declined to blench before him. “So you persist—” he remarked at length. “Then you are a villain as well as an impostor.” “Villain or impostor, I am at least Ephraim Earle,” asserted the other; adding as he noted the doctor’s fingers tighten on the slight stick he carried, “Oh, you need not show your hatred quite so plainly, Dr. Izard. I do not hate you, whatever cause I may have to do so. Have I not said that my old passions are dried up, and even signified that my coming back was but a whim? _Curraghven-hoodah_, Oswald, you weary me with your egotism. Let us shake hands and be comrades once more.”